Typhon: A Companion to 'Requiem'
by KhamanV
Summary: With destiny weighing heavy on his mind, Benjamin Linus meets with an old shaman in the Kalahari to discuss choice and consequence. But can it matter when it's all just echoes of what's happened in the distant past?


_**Typhon**_

_The victor will always be the judge, and the vanquished the accused. ~ Hermann Goering_

_2007 ~ Nyae Nyae, Namibia, the Kalahari_

Jimmy Xamseb leaned against a fence made of hot, dried out wood. A steamy evening breeze blew against him, ruffling the roughly woven cloth that covered skinny shoulders, cooling the dark scalp under close-cut salt and pepper hair. Two slender fingers held the ashing remains of a handmade cigarette, one mostly ignored by the traveling shaman. He was busy watching the white man, who himself was watching antelope flee before the setting sun. It wasn't a hunting day for the nearby village, and the herd seemed to know it. They flicked their tails and leaped against each other.

"All land's sacred to somebody," Jimmy said. He pulled the cigarette up for a drag. "Even a shithole basement in Harlem."

"Speaking personally?"

Jimmy crinkled a smile at the man's back. "Rent was cheap, and I'd gotten scholarships enough. Good place. Good memories. Bad roaches." The man made a soft, amused noise.

"And the Kalahari?" The man turned away from the antelope, now just dots against a distant horizon. Blue eyes caught firelight from the village behind them both, and his crooked lips were caught in a sardonic smile.

"Oh." Jimmy shrugged. "Everybody can claim the world started somewhere. Man out in Uluru says the power of the earth bubbles up there, got a bunch of old crocodile worshippers say it started in Kayyem, maybe you got a story for me about an island out in God himself don't know where. Doesn't matter much. I'll tell you a secret, tell a few to be particular if I'm asked right, but I'll tell you this one first: It always depends on who's looking for the way."

Benjamin Linus stalked toward the fence to lean himself against it, an arm's length from the shaman. He clasped his hands together and regarded the taller man soberly. "If we're looking that hard, we're gonna find an answer. Whether it's the right one or not."

"Makes a good story all that much more powerful."

"You mean a good lie."

"Son, I'm pretty sure _you _mean a good lie." The shaman cracked his lips into a wide grin.

"What's the difference between them, anyway?" Ben shot Jimmy a droll glance.

Jimmy gestured at him with the guttering remains of his cigarette. "You're catching on."

~*~

_Always comes back to brothers, in the great stories. The first stories. One in the black and one in the white. Always comes back to meat and blood and bone. Always told by the one that wins. The one that fails? He's out in the dark, where the exiles go. The desert that holds the small gods. Story needs its villain, always does. They know that, even then. Before the first pyramids rise, when the cults change so fast and the sand covers history like a veil. All they got are stories, and the priests tell them like magic spells. For them, every moment is the first moment. It's how you change a world._

_Meanwhile, this brother is getting scared. He's been to Tehuti for his wisdom, who looks at him with sad eyes and says little. Tehuti keeps the balance between them all, but Seteh's seen the signs for himself. One kingdom high and one low, the land divided. Seteh's been dreaming – dreaming of the end, where the little men have sworn themselves to the glory of death. It's what he fears the most; the gleaming of the desert lost behind the Mystery. The gift of life given way to the gift of death. It's an imbalance, the impending death cults, but Tehuti won't speak of it to him._

_So Seteh's on his own. He thinks of the unthinkables. His brother is growing powerful among the priests. Ausir is the young one, but he's on his way to take the birthright. It's got to stop._

_There's a box. Seteh's had it made special, of fine acacia and cedar. He doesn't want to use it, but it's the only plan that gets him close enough._

~*~

Ben Linus had indeed been looking for the way.

Since turning the wheel that exiled him to the desert, he'd been a busy man. There'd be no submarine this time, so he went to work on other methods. He reflected for a little while, waiting for the shaman to finish his duties in the village. Thinking of Sayid, who's become a clockwork killer (_Again_. _And there's a story for darker ages_, he thought grimly. _But not now_). Thinking of Jack, of Hugo locked up in the institute. Ben had been unable to breach Santa Rosa, but hadn't really needed to yet.

And Locke was back _there._ In charge, thrusting Ben's shattered destiny aside. Richard undoubtedly licking at his heels. Ben's home, gone to him. His lips twisted at the thought. He wondered if anyone had taken Alex and buried her, as was right. Or if she was rotting on the ground. He looked away and squinted into the sun, shoving the thought into sealed darkness.

And Widmore was out there. Again. As ever.

The nuts Ben stored away against a future winter had born strong roots. Passports buried in Tunisian hiding holes come out to day. Expired, but a quick communication to Dan Norton waved that issue away. Along with any money worries Ben could have dreamed of.

If Ben thought he could choose, he could toss it all, go hide in a Tuscan valley, and watch his fingernails grow until he's too old to bother anyone. It's a tempting thought. Fickle bitch that destiny is, he can't think that way for more than the briefest daydream. There's work to be done.

Work that did not include a strange holiday in the middle of the Kalahari desert, but to hell with it. Who's gonna pick at him? Jacob? And his off-center mouth twisted again, torn between guilt and hate. It's fertile ground, his heart for hate, and he hid it well. So he believed.

As the bright morning sun drew on to fiery afternoon, Jimmy beckoned to him. They were going to go for their own kind of walkabout.

~*~

_He killed Ausir. That'll dog him till the end of time, Seteh knows it. Every jackal that lines the tomb-valley cliffs stares at him with the carrion hunger that marks him as a murderer like their own. One who ate his soul's innocence like a fatty, bloody heart. He believes he killed Ausir for right purpose, it lets him sleep, and when the girl brings the body back home in its cedar and acacia coffin, he tears it all apart in a rage and scatters meat and blood and bone into the Great River. Like an offering, or a prayer. She looked at him, huge, limpid eyes, and went away again. Told him it'd come back around. That it can't end, except for the once. She believes in Ausir. Not him, as everyone used to. Seteh's been cast aside._

_He's building hate inside his heart. Hate for the Sun-son who watches them all in whitelight silence and never acknowledges Seteh anymore. Hate for the advisor, Tehuti, who still says nothing to guide. It'll take time to tend it up right, but the hate is fertile like the Delta fields._

_And somewhere else inside is hope that he's done right by the future._

_~*~_

Acacia trees and scrub gathered in the shade of a large rock formation. Distant predators vocalized, too hot in the midday to do much else but sound off their boundaries. Knowing that didn't keep Ben from maintaining a watchful eye on his surroundings, a borrowed hunting rifle slung on his back. The louder, distinctly leonine rumbles amidst the jackal cries gave him more than a moment's pause, and more than a little rueful reflection on the whim that brought him to find the old friend of long-dead Beazy.

Jimmy himself seemed to hold no such worries – as Ben did not fear jungle tangle for price of knowing it too well, the wide African desert was the shaman's own land. He watched it, watched over it with a distant serenity that reminded Ben more than once of ageless dark eyes. The world held more than one place of power, certainly. It was possible one rested deep beneath their feet - his in thick boots, the shaman's bare and leathery - sleeping in stone and sand.

The shaman gestured at the rocks, four of them of various heights jutting up and curling in on themselves. "_There were giants in the earth in those days,_" he quoted. Then he looked at Ben, who was assessing the stones with a solemn expression. "Or not," he added.

"Depends on what you believe." Ben glanced over at the shaman, catching the pleased nod. He took a seat on a flat stone and pulled out a canteen, uncapping it for a long drink. "Do you know why I came out here?"

"I'll assume it's the pleasure of my company and a story or two." Jimmy cocked his head and fixed Ben with an unreadable stare. "Because, son, I'm no confessional. I don't want your story. It's not my weight to carry. I got my own."

Ben nodded slowly, then shrugged once, as if trying to keep his response offhanded and not loaded with private weight. "There's a man back home. A kind of advisor, though I never got much in the way of advice from him. I don't have him to ask, not sure I'd take his answer at this point anyway, so I came to you. I'm... sorry about Beazy," he finished awkwardly. Ten years and a little more, and he'd only discovered the death of the hunter a month back. The knowledge had settled in him heavily. Old debts he hadn't even known about. He thought reflexively of Tahiti, of long journeys across Eurasia, then shut the memory down.

Jimmy shrugged. "All things for a price. Beazy got where he needed to be, and he died with mother Africa under his feet. It's how he'd have liked it, had he known." He settled back and down against a jutting stone and watched heated air waver along the sand. "Ask me your questions and I'll tell you your lies."

Ben stared at a cloud that strove to obscure the sun. "I want to know about destiny. If there's ever a choice involved. And what happens if your choice is wrong."

Jimmy sat in silence a long time, just looking at him. Finally he snorted, and began to pull out the papers for another cigarette. "Shit, son. Can't we just talk game show trivia instead?"

~*~

_Heru came to Seteh long after he thought it was done. Ausir was alive, and that was horror enough. Never before had Seteh seen this miracle happen. Healings, yes. Floods when the crops cried out most desperately. Strange signs and wonders, the curing of the infertility curse. But not this new undeath, this coming forth of the corpse by day._

_Seteh had torn him apart, but Ausir was One again. He smelled of strangeness, and claimed this Heru as his own son. Impossible. But here he was. The cults ululated his name and the Sun-son had put Ausir by his side. Tehuti had crowned him. Follow Ausir, the priests now said. Follow his path precisely, and we too can go forth by day. Death be cast aside. They chanted fit to drown out the hymns of the Sun-son. It was truly horror. It was the nightmare he had feared. And he had helped bring it. Seteh kept to his temples at Ombos, struck by the mistake he had made in fighting destiny._

_Man should not idolize the lords of the dead when life was all around them. But his home, his country... this place was now death._

_And now, come to him in his own holy place, the death-son. Heru stared at Seteh a long time, refusing the customary drink of welcome. And then Heru struck. Threw Seteh against the wall, beating at him. Seteh was startled – he was a great warrior, but this child who was not yet a man struck at him with wild fervor._

_"YOU WILL OBEY!" screamed Heru. "Anything we command, you will do! When the barge travels, you will face Apep on our behalf!"_

_"I serve the Sun-son, this I have always done, always will-"_

_"Swear it! Swear it, or I will see you wholly destroyed! Already your temples crumble and our priests write new cosmos."_

_"I swear!" Seteh cried, hating himself in his weakness. Heru nodded once, then flew away, leaving the once-proud warrior sagged against temple stone._

_"I swear," Seteh spat, trembling. "But my sons and their sons I tie to my destiny. Until destiny is put right!"_

~*~

"Here's what I know. Nothing. Not a god damned thing. And that's the first step." Jimmy shrugged again. "The choices we make are built from the things we experience. Advice is just... pissing into the wind. I can't know your story, only you can know it. And you won't even know all of it, won't know every step that made you. The things we get told, by man or by gods, aren't necessarily true. It's all a lie to somebody." He twirled the half-made cigarette in his fingers, then tossed it away on a whim. He examined Ben's pinched face. "Not starting off with what you want to hear, I take it."

"It's all, what, random? Nothing means anything?"

"Probably not random, but neither does it make it meaningful. Someone makes a choice, it's going to affect another choice. And on down history's road.

"They make a big deal in the states about guilt. About bearing the cross of the past. And I see both sides of it, I truly do." The shaman steepled his fingers together, considering. "Fact of the matter is, whether you want it or not, the past has weight. Some ancestor makes a decision, it comes on down to you. You didn't ask for it, but the responsibility is yours anyway. Nowadays, we step away from Original Sin as a theological construct, but I think it's there. Maybe not in the way the fat old Pope speaks it, but every piece of the present is built on the stone of the past. Can't shake it. We're walking on it every second of the day. And that's destiny. Just the narrow road of history's make."

"Process of elimination. Choices get made for us because someone cut off the other routes. We can't get asked for our decision because there's nothing left_ to _ask." Ben's twisted, angered expression settled into one of resigned consideration.

"You're getting it. Maybe we never know who made those choices for us, not till it's all over. But it makes for a good story meanwhile. Full of blood and redemption."

"Can't we ever make a choice that goes beyond all that?"

"A man once wrote that there were always paths outside destiny's garden, but he was writing a fable. Could be so, but hard to get there if you can't see it. If you can't find the way."

Ben nodded slowly. Eventually he spoke, his voice thin. "I'm gonna have to find a way back home. See what I can do." _See if John Locke has to die. Tried once. Try again._

"Here's a question of your own, to keep you up at night. What if you decide and then you walk right into what you're fearing most?"

Ben thought for a long while. Alex, dead. His hands dipped deep into blood – by his own act and now by Sayid's gun. A tumor on his spine. His people, torn apart bit by bit over the course of a hundred days. And Jacob, distant, unseen Jacob. Sins of the past. All to try and do his part right by destiny. "I'd be pretty much fucked."

"Story of the human race," Jimmy said. And then he laughed. After a few moments, Ben joined in, feeling doomed and beginning to not care.

~*~

_Most men know Seteh and Ausir's story as the books have written it. It's one of the Great Stories, and many a culture has built on it and made it their own. Oh we know it well even if we think we don't – the two brothers, one dark and one light. And the dark one comes forward and plays a trick on the light one, a fatal trick. And the light one comes back eventually, maybe he pulls himself together after three days, or maybe the pieces of him are collected and brought together by his lovers and his kin. Maybe there's a fire involved. And the light one is powerful, but will no longer dwell solely among the living world. His people put him over the dead, and tell you that he watches, and his peace is a thing to strive for. That he watches over as your life struggles on towards his death._

_But it's always a lie to somebody. Nobody ever asks the dark one his version. Nobody looks outside destiny's garden. Not if they can help it. Destiny's got enough weight. Free will? That carries like the world itself. If you knew it true, you'd crush under it._

_The shaman knows all the stories. He lets the white man go, crossing his own desert to his own ending. Instead of a goodbye, he just repeats the words that have guided the man this far – Lies ain't ever more than just truths that haven't happened. Then he says another thing - A story's not good for anything but to pass a little time. So we lied together a bit, he says to Ben, and he holds up a hand in farewell. Nodding at the wave in return._

_Jimmy's got his place in destiny. He'll be in it a long time, longer yet than he's been in it so far, and he knows the sight of a murderer when it comes to him. But the carrion kind also have their place in this world, and he bears Ben no ill will. Destiny takes care of that for him. Destiny, and choices Ben never got to make._

~_Fin_

(ABC's LOST and its characters are not my creation, nor do I claim any ownership or rights to the above content beyond that of the average godforsaken fanfiction writer. All errors are my own.)

7/15/09 MDS


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